The following are true regarding Lyme's Disease, EXCEPT:
High-Yield Explanation
B. burgdorferi, the causative agent of Lyme disease, is a fastidious microaerophilic bacterium. Louse-borne relapsing fever (LBRF) is caused by Borrelia recurrentis. To maintain its complex enzootic cycle, B. burgdorferi must adapt to two markedly different environments: the tick and the mammalian host. Epidemiologic studies of patients with EM implicated ceain Ixodes ticks as vectors of the disease. Ticks of the I. ricinus complex have larval, nymphal, and adult stages. They require a blood meal at each stage. The risk of infection in a given area depends largely on the density of these ticks as well as their feeding habits and animal hosts, which have evolved differently in different locations. Note - Spirochetes are transmitted in tick-mouse-deer cycle. Ticks must feed on humans in the woods, which is their habitat. Adult and nymph stages can infect humans. Ticks feed on mice and then deer. No deer, no disease. Erythema migrans and febrile aches mark acute disease. A macule or papule appears at the site of the bite and expands to become an annular lesion with a raised, red border and central clearing forming a bull's-eye pattern. As the bull's-eye ring expands, the lesion is known as erythema migrans. Ref: Steere A.C. (2012). Chapter 173. Lyme Borreliosis. In D.L. Longo, A.S. Fauci, D.L. Kasper, S.L. Hauser, J.L. Jameson, J. Loscalzo (Eds), Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 18e.